Kim Hasty: Remembering a fallen classmate by helping others

Sunday

Aug 13, 2017 at 3:00 PM

It won't be long before members of the Terry Sanford High School Class of 1977 will get together and recall all those Friday and Saturday evenings spent listening to the Doobie Brothers and the Commodores down at Rowan Park.

"You'd have 50 cars down there with their trunks open,'' said Martha Broadfoot Bock. "It was a lot of good wholesome fun.''

They hung out at places such as Shakey's Pizza on Bragg Boulevard and A.J.'s Steaks and Hoagies on Fort Bragg Road. There were football games and slumber parties galore.

"We were a very close class,'' Bock said.

And then they went their separate ways.

At their 40-year reunion weekend scheduled for Sept. 29-30, they'll be remembering a classmate who often was in the middle of all that fun.

"A wonderful person,'' Bock said. "She was very, very popular.''

And that characterization never changed for Frankie Campbell Roberts, even as she left behind those high school days.

Her death on April 12, 2015, devastated all who had known her, including those from her high school days and those she met through her work as a sales representative for Dex Media. She died outside her Anderson Creek home after being struck by lightning after taking her beloved dogs out for a walk during a storm in the early morning hours. She was 56.

By the time she and Dan met in 1996, both had been married and divorced. He is in the business of hotel management and spotted her walking down the hall during a business conference. Just as he was about to introduce himself, he was called away. And then she was gone.

"I even told my secretary that I probably missed the woman I could have spent the rest of my life with,'' he said.

Two days later, however, he spotted her again when she walked into a birthday gathering for a mutual friend. She was, however, arm in arm with another man.

"I went over and put my arm around her,'' Dan Roberts said.

It turned out that the other man was a friend. But, how, she wondered, did Dan know that?

"I didn't,'' he answered, jokingly. "But I figured I could take him.''

The two were inseparable from that day forward, and they were married in 1998.

"I used to see pictures of them and think, 'Gosh, they're so happy,' '' Bock said.

Bock is executive director of Stanton Hospitality House, a nonprofit organization that serves as an oasis for families with loved ones being treated at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. When the unthinkable happened, she thought they might provide refuge for Frankie's family.

"Stanton House had offered its services to family members, since their house was in Anderson Creek and we are so close by,'' Bock said.

Though Frankie's death came too quickly for the facility to be of service, the Class of 1977 is planning to raise enough money to name a room in the Stanton Hospitality House in her memory. The goal is to raise $2,500. That way, someone who needs the services of the facility won't have to worry about payment.

Contributors need not be members of the Class of 1977. Checks can be mailed to Bock at P.O. Box 53551, Fayetteville, NC, 28305. Donations also can be made online at ftsclassof77reunion.myevent.com.

Columnist Kim Hasty can be reached at khasty@fayobserver.com or 486-3591.

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